Money makes all the difference when it comes to tackling ice addiction in Victoria

By Chloe Booker

When James Gianchino found his best friend – a fellow ice addict – hanging in his garage, he responded to the tragedy by rapidly increasing his own drug use.

What had started six years earlier as a tool to help him cope with the demands of his job soon robbed James of his house, his six-figure salary and his fiancee.

James Gianchino, a recovered ice addict, says he was initially turned away from a state-funded drug withdrawal unit because "his problem was not yet bad enough."Credit:Simon O'Dwyer

He was smoking ice every day and his weight crashed to just 48 kilos. He became unemployable and homeless.

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Two years ago, in a desperate state, James went to a state-funded withdrawal unit in the northern suburbs, looking for help. But, he says, the workers turned him away. His problem was not yet bad enough, they said.

The huge haul illustrates the extent of the methamphetamine problem.

Weeks later, he attempted to take his own life. "I thought, bugger this, you know, what's the point? When you're denied access [to help], what chance have you got?"

In the end, his family came to the rescue, offering to pay $1500 a week for him to go to a private rehabilitation centre. James is now transformed. "From absolute spiritual and mental death . . . now I can be completely rational and I'm sensitive and I can be there for my family," he says.

James's case is a telling example of how having money can make all the difference when it comes to tackling ice addiction in this state.

There are 208 public drug residential rehabilitation beds in Victoria – all of which can be used by ice users. More than 332 private beds are available to ice users.

James Gianchino's case is stark reminder of how ice addicts with money can get help faster than their poorer counterparts.Credit:Simon O'Dwyer

Waiting lists at public rehab facilities can be up to six months but ice addicts who can afford to can, most of the time, enter a private facility within days.

Stuart Fenton is a drug and alcohol counsellor at Malvern Private Hospital. He has worked in both the private and public systems in Victoria and NSW. Fenton says he now directs his patients without health insurance or the money to enter a private rehab to go to public ones in NSW. In that state, there are more than 800 public beds, all which can treat ice addicts, and shorter waiting lists.

"An ice addict that doesn't have money in Victoria . . . they'll ring up and do the phone assessment and they're told [it will be] somewhere between a three to six-month wait," Fenton says. "An ice addict that has money, they put up their hand, say they have a problem and they go straight in."

The person on the waiting list, he says, will likely get lost in the system. "They go off and do more crime and end up in jail and miss that opportunity or they stick it out in addiction or they die," he says.

Over the past six years, since ice became a major problem in Victoria, the number of public drug rehab beds has barely changed. But at least 110 beds have opened in seven new private rehab facilities. The recent parliamentary inquiry into ice found that waiting lists for treatment and withdrawal were too long.

A bed in a private rehabilitation centre can cost from next to nothing to tens of thousands of dollars for a few months. At Christian philosophy-based ones, where patients read the bible instead of receiving psychological help, patients are only required to contribute their Centrelink payments and do jobs around the centre.

At private hospitals offering rehabilitation programs, health insurance covers most of the costs. However, it can take some months before patients can use health insurance for rehab after first signing up. Without health insurance these rehab beds cost about $800 a day.

The 127 private rehab beds not covered by health insurance all cost thousands of dollars up front. At Raymond Hader Clinic, near Geelong, $32,000 will buy you a three-month program (not including after care). Innisfree in Woodend costs between $3325 and $4000 a week. Overseas centres that take Australian clients, for example in Thailand or Bali, offer treatment for around half this amount.

Experts in the drug and alcohol field lament that for many addicts the ability to beat the condition depends on one's ability to pay. And they say reforms meant to improve the system are only making the situation worse.

Fenton also runs a private counselling practice in Ballarat and, until recently, worked in the region's community health centre. The situation in Ballarat is "dire", he says.

With no nearby rehab facility, he can only offer one-on-one counselling or facilitation into a 10-day withdrawal unit. Fenton says it can take anywhere between one to six months to get off ice, with no assurances treatment will be successful.

The state's drug and alcohol sector went through the first stage of a reform process in September under the former Liberal government. The reform is yet to touch residential rehabilitation services, but workers, consumers and industry experts are already reporting they have made access to treatment even more difficult.

The first stage of reform has involved the tendering out of non-residential services, such as counselling and outpatient programs that were previously government run. Many not-for-profits have won contracts for previously government run services.

The Age has spoken to many public drug and alcohol workers who say privately they have deep concerns with about the new system, but cannot speak on the record for fear of losing their jobs or funding.

One of the main gripes is with a new telephone intake and assessment process, which categorises problem drug and alcohol users into five tiers from low to high risk, that was meant to make the system easier to navigate.

But workers say the under-resourced phone line is blowing out waiting times to get into public rehabs, causing people to fall through the cracks, and they are losing coalface interaction with clients.

Under the previous intake system, people rang individual withdrawal and rehab services directly and then went in for face-to-face assessments.

Sam Biondo, the CEO of the Victoria Alcohol and Drug Association, says there appears to be "overwhelming" demand for rehab beds and underinvestment by the former Coalition government.

"There's a lot being asked of this system with no new money," he says. "The whole residential treatment area has probably been historically underfunded in Victoria, compared to other states."

Biondo points out that while alcohol and drug services can be expensive, funding of rehab beds is "substantially under the level of investment that goes into prison beds".

The other problem, he says is that the rehab system was built around dealing with heroin use and treating ice addicts required prolonged psychosocial support.

The Age has obtained a letter from senior drug and alcohol clinicians at Barwon Health to management, which calls the service's new centralised phone system a "disaster waiting to happen", with "widespread confusion and frustration" at how to access help.

Barwon Health has lost 16 per cent of its clinical staff and approximately half of its funding in the shake up, with tenders going to a consortium of not-for-profit service providers. The letter details increased delays in directing people into treatment because of a reduction in assessors.

"Rather than rationalising and streamlining alcohol and other drug services in the Barwon region there is now a confusing conglomerate of services competing for a smaller share of over-all regional [Alcohol and other drug] funding," it says.

Stage two of the reform was a plan to overhaul the rehab system, but with the change of government, its status is uncertain. The Age asked Minister for Mental Health Martin Foley whether stage two of the reforms would go ahead, but he declined to answer. He says the former Coalition government had "botched" the mental health system and calls the new drug and alcohol phone line "impersonal".

However, Foley did not say whether his government would fix the phone line problems. He also did not respond to questions about whether rehabilitation beds would be increased or waiting times tackled.

He says Labor is taking a "holistic approach" to the "ice crisis" by funding "grassroots community action groups". Premier Daniel Andrews has promised $500,000 for such groups.

Foley says the government is on track to deliver its "ice action plan" within its first 100 days, as promised. A 16-member taskforce, including mental health expert Professor Patrick McGorry, Dandenong drug court magistrate Tony Parsons and the police deputy commissioner, will develop the plan.

"This taskforce will take into account the often forgotten needs of communities including rural and regional, LGBTI and indigenous people, and families seeking help for loved ones," Foley says.

The taskforce will be guided by the findings of the parliamentary inquiry into ice, tabled in September, which the government has until early March to respond to.

James Gianchino, who is now working again, says he looks back in anger at not being able to get help in the public system when he most needed it.

"I now have become a law-abiding, tax-paying, functioning good member of society," Gianchino says. "The value of spending a bit of money on treating people with addiction for . . . them to be reintegrated back into society and being able to hold a job, that's good investment."

But he was lucky. Another ice addict, Mark, 32, not his real name, has a similar story to James, only he has been unable to afford rehab treatment.

Mark lives in the outer northern suburbs andstarted using speed when he was 17. He smoked his first ice pipe at 21. At first, he was able to hold down a sales job, but as his addiction grew, he lost it due to his erratic behaviour. Mark says he has since been beaten, robbed and jailed after entering a dangerous criminal underworld to fund his habit.

"It brings the animal out of you," Mark says. "Everyone's paranoid. No one's friends no more, there's no loyalty . . . I'm hating it, every day is a battle," he says.

Last year, Mark tried to enter the public system, but after being told he would have to wait for months to get in, he gave up. "That thought and that feeling of wanting to get clean, it sort of just died," he says with sunken, tired eyes.

"I don't want to keep living like this. I'm worried. I don't know what to do."